Can anyone recommend a good guide for creating a blog network?

Honestly, I think buying expired blogs for PR is pretty "old school" stuff and will not help you much with Google anymore. I would buy only sites that will get you quality traffic or an established user base. It's possible you could get some short term results, but spinning articles will likely get caught by Google Panda as well.

Instead go for the approach of creating something worthwhile and helping real people know about it. If the idea is good, it will spread through word of mouth, and you'll find success.

Hi

Ultimately, this is THE most important step in building your private network. You want domain names that have an existing link profile, with age and a good Google history too.
That means no spammy links, nothing from questionable foreign sites, no adult or gambling sites either.
Where to Find Quality Domains?
I use a number of resources to find and aquire high quality domain names, all of which allow us to search for both expired, expiring and auction domains.
DomainHaul
ExpiredDomains.net

PBN's tend to have this mixed track record, and it's mostly because it's not as easy to fly under the radar with them anymore. It used to be a sort of "push a button" ranking when any old PBN would do, and now it's way overdone and Google is looking out for it. But here's some basic pointers.

Domains
It's much much easier to get your PBN kickstarted by buying a expired domains that have backlinks from high authority sites already. An aged domain with high powered links is always going to beat out a brand new domain.

There are two ways to do it really. You can go to expireddomains.net and scrape through them yourself checking them one by one, but this is REALLY overdone. Or you can go to somewhere like SwayDomains.com and buy one that someone has already done all the checking for you. If you have the time, go for the former, if you want to get up and going, take the latter.

The things you want to look for in domains are :

• Moz Domain Authority of atleast 10.
• MajesticSEO TrustFlow atleast over say 10. Usually over 15. But if the domain was an exact match for your niche, then I say go even lower if it has some good backlinks.
• A clean backlink profile. That means no viagra links. No chinese/russian characters. And not overspammed with other bad links.
• The domain should ideally never have been used in a PBN before, and hopefully only ever had one owner/use.
• Ideally have a backlink from a super authoritive site (Like bbc.com, HuffingtonPost etc)

Again, with ExpiredDomains you are going to have to do this checking yourself. Something like Swaydomains you can buy one already prechecked.

When you buy the domains. It's better to buy them across different registrars just IMO. Either using slightly different WHOIS Info/Whois Guard. It leaves one less footprint.

Hosting
For hosting, I mostly recommend going and buying super cheap hosting on different webhosts. This can be a pain to manage sometimes, but it ensures sites in your PBN are all on vastly different hosts/IP's. DO NOT fall into the trap of buying a VPS/Reseller hosting and hosting them all on there. That is a huge footprint.

There are "SEO Webhosting" options that can give you different IP's for your site. (I've seen Web Hosting Service by IX. Shared, VPS and Cloud Hosting | IX Web Hosting recommended in other threads), but you have to be careful that IP's aren't sequential.

New Content vs Old Content vs 301 Redirect

So once you have the domains, you can choose how you want to have them link to you.

New Content
New content means you write your own brand new content. Can sometimes be good if you bought a domain that isn't really within your niche, but had awesome metrics so you bought it anyway. You should 301 all 404 pages back to your homepage to make sure existing backlinks still pass their juice.

Old Content
Old content means you use archive.org and find what content was originally on the site and use that. This can be good because it makes it look like the website never changed. Some sites however may have had forums/huge amounts of posts etc so it may not really be feasible to do this.

301 Redirect
So a 301 redirect just means you redirect the entire domain to your money site. This isn't really a PBN style strategy, but it can work. Also means you don't have to get hosting as your domain registrar will offer domain redirects anyway.

Steady Goes
The most important thing about PBN's IMO is that you have to have the patience to not just spam the hell out of everything that comes up. Take your time building the PBN. Slowly link it back to your money site, not all at once. You should be looking for incremental improvements in the serps not one massive leap to number 1.

There is so much going interms of PBN (working /not working)
From My experience it still works, Its all in the way you set up things?